Electronic shopping systems which make use of the World Wide Web ("Web") to transfer information between merchants and consumers are known in the art. In systems of this type, the consumer uses a standard Web browser to request and download hypertext documents from merchant Web sites. (The client and server software components of the World Wide Web are commonly referred to respectively as the "Web browser," which runs on the user's computer, and the "Web server," which runs on a Web site.) These hypertext documents, which are created using HTML (the HyperText Markup Language), contain the various product offerings and other purchase-related information of the respective merchants, and typically include forms for allowing consumers to return payment and address information to the merchants.
One significant problem with existing Web-based electronic shopping systems is that HTML does not provide a flexible mechanism for passing information between the Web browser and other applications running on the same user computer. This in-turn makes it difficult for software developers to provide specialized electronic shopping functionality (such as database structures and routines for storing and encrypting payment and shipping information) on the user computer. As a result, few (if any) Web-based electronic shopping systems include specialized client code for performing electronic shopping related functions. The present invention seeks to overcome this problem, and various related problems, while making use of existing World Wide Web components and protocols.